The Evil Duopoly
The two friendly giant of Coles and Woolworths are no longer partners of their suppliers – they are now their biggest competitors. And brand owners need to ask themselves the same question the supermarkets are asking:

Will consumers notice if brand X is removed from the shelf?

Where the word “notice” translates to shift their shopping basket elsewhere.

It seems Coles and Woolworths have no regard for the brands of their suppliers. They don’t have to. There are very few brands that any consumer would move their shopping baskets to another retailer for. And they know it. Coles and Woolworths will continue to delete brands from product categories until they have a little over 3 brands in each category. One of which will certainly be theirs.

It means there are only 2 survival strategies:

1. Be brand leader in the category. Even the number 2 player is not safe.
2. Innovate radically to invent new ways to distribute consumer goods.

The good news is that the technology is arriving that makes direct relationships with consumers possible. Just look at what has happened to department stores. FMCG brands must invent new ways to take control of their brand at the transaction end.

The TV Industrial Complex is evaporating in front of our eyes.

• We can no longer buy an audience on demand.
• It’s no longer a brand built monologue.
• Consumers and are now connected and in control.
• We live in a world of excess supply.
• And it’s harder than ever to differentiate consumer goods.
• Competition and price pressure is reducing margins.
• Advertising is becoming less cost effective as audience attention fragments.

Consumer brands are facing a structural change for the ages. To survive supermarket brands must mean more than being a product at a price point. They need to represent the value systems of today’s consumer.

Which might mean that everything they talk about is one layer outside of what they are selling. And instead be about brand value systems, what they represent, what the brand believes in, how it helps people, the environment, creativity, well being, brings families together and so on.

Unless there is a significant, ownable point of difference, brands cannot just talk about what is sold inside the bottle or the pack. Those that do are destined for commodisation and ultimate the demise of profitability. What brand marketers must do is be part of important conversations with their audience. They need to augment lifestyle even if in a subtle way. It’s only when we do this that we can have a point of view in the new ‘attention economy’.

Brands that have a share of voice in the new media landscape will be ready to participate in emerging distribution channels when they arrive. Because in the coming years technology will evolve to the point where promotion and distribution will merge into the one seamless process.

What I’d be doing if I was an FMCG company in Australia is investing all of my advertising investment in channel innovation – I’d move all that consumer money across. To the boring area of distribution – the area that has been ignored for the past 20 years… Who they sell to. “We’ll just sell to who we’ve always sold to”.  I’d be finding new ways connecting the communication and distribution using smart phone technology, and emerging NFC and RFID technology. I’d be collaborating with other packaged goods concerns to invent new channels, and I’d be working out ways to sell directly to my consumer and circumvent the retailer entirely.

Sure, Australia is a tiny market on a global scale. In fact it is inconsequential to most global consumers goods organisations such as Kraft, Proctor & Gamble, Unilever and co. But what is happening in Australia, is a sample of what is to come in larger markets such as the USA, Europe and Asia. Dominant players like Walmart will continue to call the shots, and eat into suppliers business via backwards vertical integration. If large FMCG companies were smart they’d be using the Australian market as a test case for a new strategy to distribute their products. But that will probably never have for one simple reason: The people that run these companies would never ‘over invest’ in their companies. The only future any CEO cares about in this day and age is the short term growth in the share price for their options and their impending bonus at year end.

Code Years a very cool thing. It is basically a a week by week on line lesson to learn how to code computers. It also priced at most peoples favourite price – Free!

Now, I’m not saying that everyone or anyone should become a programmer. I am a strong believer in doing what you do well – expertise. Especially in the entrepreneurial field where I think we create more value organising the factors of production, than we do being them. But the point is it pays to know about the world around us. It might help us understand ‘how’ to make our on-line projects a reality.

As far as Codeacademy are concerned there’s nearly another 400,000 people who know about them thanks to their generosity.

Startup blog says: Get on Code Year!

• Property returns on average about 10%. Which is quite similar to the share market on.
• Banks will lend much more money for property investments due to lower volatility than shares.
• You should buy investment properties that you, yourself would like to live in.
• Land goes up in value. Concrete and air does not increase in value.
• Period buildings (unique styles, historical) have higher capital growth than the average property.
• Rental returns are usually below 5% per annum.
• Property investment can be a quicker path to wealth than shares due to leverage (borrowing money).
• Getting someone to manage a property costs about 7% of the rent per week. (so you wont have to fix toilets)
• You should always allow for 6 weeks a year vacancy on rental properties.
• High capital growth properties & areas, tend to have lower rental yields.
• High yield properties tend to have low capital growth.
• Areas going through gentrification usually have greater capital growth.
• A rental guarantee is a lie – the rent for the guarantee period is usually built into the selling price.
• Auctions are invented by real estate agents who want it to sell quick to get their money.
• Homes on busy roads have a higher turnover of renters and reduced yield.
• Homes near water (river, beach, lake) grow faster and fetch a premium.
• Tax benefits of property investment in Australia are a significant advantage.
• You can draw out profits (capital gain)  from a property that has grown in value and not pay tax on it
• You can buy insurance against tenants in case they damage your house (Landlord Insurance).
• Investors should choose between yield or capital growth when investing.
• Capital gains tax on selling is 50% lower if you’ve held the property for over 12 months.
• Property investing is very dependent on government policy, technological change, and infrastructure.
• The key to investing is compound growth. Trading removes the power of compounding.
• Trading properties & developing, is not investing, they are more like running businesses.
• Trading properties is expensive – acquisition usually costs between 6-9% of market value.
• Disposing of property usually costs around 3-5% of market value.
• The property market can go through long periods of sustained stagnation, 10% returns is 100 year+ average.
• Buying properties off the plan is risky. The saving in stamp duty can be a false friend.
• Mortgage insurance is for the bank, not the mortgage holder.
• The word mortgage is French, meaning; An engagement until death.
• I believe that property is a get rich slow category
• The biggest land holder on earth is ‘The Catholic Church’

Hope this helps getting you off and running in your property ventures. Good authors on the subject include; Jane Somers and Dolf De Roos.

Will you?

I feel one of the most important insights to this new era of entrepreneurialism, is that knowing the answer is not really that important – if at all important. We instead just need to make it up as we go along. Ask a lot of questions and be honest with the people in the process that there is quite a lot that we just don’t know, at least until we build it.

The only job left to do now, is dream up the best data mashups based on the context of where the window is, because the technology evidenced below needs entrepreneurs underneath it to create real meaning and purpose.

What Statigram does:

- It provides statistics on your instagram feed (hmm obvious)

- It shows who we interact with the most

- Timelines on our usage patterns and filters

- Churns your stats into really cool infographics ‘about us’

- Allows us to send private messages to followers

- Details on our tag patterns

- It even has photo printing capaibilities

… in fact, here’s a little photo essay of some of the cool stuff it does from my @sammartino instagram feed so you can get a good feel for it. There is no doubt in my mind that Statigram will end up being acquired by the API forefather assuming it continues its rapid growth trajectory.

Philosophy: The first thing that has to change is how we view the world. We need to embrace of philosophy of self responsibility. The first thing that must change is our mind. But this on it’s own is not enough. How many smart people have you met who can talk a good game, but never do anything about it?

Attitude: It’s no point knowing about something valuable unless we truly believe it is possible, and that it is possible for us. I actually find the word attitude interesting as it is referred to in aviation. The attitude of an aircraft is its angle of flight, or orientation in reference to the ground. Basically, the direction it is headed… While flying, attitude is something which requires constant attention and maintenance.

Activity: It all means nothing if it is just mental. We’ve got to act on the two above factors, or we’ll just end up as another one of those people know the path, but never actually walk it.

Today I saw something awesome. A simple video projection come moving art, come installation, come viral video. It was very next level. In fact the guy show sen it to me (Rohan) said it was ‘off chops’. You can see it below. But what I’m really wondering is, for how long can we keep going to the next level until there is nowhere left to go?

While this sounds like some kind of nerd nirvana, it is actually a counter intuitive move that forms a large part of the marketing genius of social web 2.0 applications. And that is outsourcing the R&D to total strangers. That is, entrepreneurs who have new and interesting ways to mash up their content. It is quite revolutionary in fact. Corporations from the pre-web industrial era would rarely let people use their logo, let alone open up part of the factory for hackers to come in and try and build something interesting. But this is exactly what is happening, the most amazing stuff is usually coming from external organisations and the entire ecosystem is the beneficiary.

• Existing web companies get their new product development for free
• Entrepreneurs get a shot at being acquired by the firms whose API they focus on

The open API idea has to be one of the major reasons why technology companies are eating the world. The only question remaining is why don’t old world industrial companies open up their doors to some new, fresh and external innovation?